A recipe for living with cancer.

I found the lump in my breast a while ago. I cannot remember if it was a month or two or three. I found it and meant to call but life got busy. I had a final to finish and the kids were coming to visit. I had an appointment with my internist coming up so I knew I could ask her to take a look at it. Why didn’t I have a sense of urgency as soon as I found it, why was I satisfied to wait until I saw my doc? Did I know in subconsciously what it was and not want to face it at that moment? I didn’t even tell Tom. I tell him everything and when I find something I always, always make him feel it, look it, figure out if I should panic. But this time I didn’t I waited and mentioned it to him in passing the morning of my appointment. Now I beat my self up and think, I wasn’t doing my self-checks regularly enough, I should have gone immediately, I blew it. Later I stopped beating myself up when I found out how long I probably have had this growing in me.

The kids came and we had a grand party for everyone to meet Reviva and then as quickly as they arrived, they left. They only come for four or five day visits and it is so short. But every visit whether it is here, in Jackson, in Captiva wherever, the night before they or we leave we stay up late chatting. Every time. I always say to myself, next time I will stay up late talking more nights than just that one. But its always the last night, trying to jam in all the things we want to say to one another or questions we have for each other.

These talks become philosophical, medical, humorous, but hold a seriousness of how much we love one another and don’t want the visit to end. This last visit we spent a lot of time that last night talking about cancer. We talked about Marisa and her death from brain cancer and how terrible it is. Josh said, “All cancer is terrible.” I said, “Some is worse than others.” The more we talked about various people with cancer, Marylyn with Lung Cancer, Joanie with Pituitary, Mom with Breast, Dad with Leukemia, I realized he was absolutely right all cancer is terrible. I don’t remember much else from the conversation yet it lasted for almost three hours. I just remember the feeling of sharing. Kalen, Josh, me, just sitting and shooting the sh-t. We go from topic to topic so easily without hesitation without thought. I am blessed that way; both my children talk to me about stuff. All kinds of stuff that many parents never hear about, some parents would rather not hear about and some parents like us who can’t wait to hear about.